The present invention relates to the production, design, and maintenance of business forms within a document management system. In order to produce, design, and maintain a group of forms for a particular business, it is often desirable to evaluate the forms currently in use at the business. The object of the evaluation process is to produce a new form portfolio for the business, tailored to the specific needs of the business. The new form portfolio is likely to represent, for example, a streamlined form inventory, a more comprehensive form inventory, a more cost-effective form inventory, or combinations thereof.
The conventional method of evaluating these forms involves the collection of samples of each form. The sample forms are usually gathered from a central warehouse and grouped together in, for example, a three ring binder. The entire collection of the particular business' forms are then evaluated as a group by manually paging through the binder. Evaluation notes are manually recorded from page to page until the entire binder has been examined. The evaluation notes are then used as the basis for producing a new group of business forms which more appropriately corresponds to the particular needs of the business.
According to the conventional method of evaluation, it is difficult to examine and review the form characteristics of the group of forms because it is not possible to view information from more than one form simultaneously. For example, if an analysis technician wishes to evaluate and compare the names of all the forms, it is necessary to flip from form to form within the binder and observe the name on each form. Similarly, if the analysis technician wishes to examine the collective functions of the forms, it is necessary to page through the binder and individually ascertain the function of each form. This page-by-page analysis approach is inefficient, as a result of its manual nature, and is inaccurate because it is easy to inadvertently skip forms and overlook form information while paging through the binder. This inaccuracy and inefficiency becomes exaggerated as the number of forms within the binder and the number of binders holding the forms increase.
The conventional method of evaluation is also undesirable because every time an analysis technician wishes to evaluate a previously unexamined aspect of the forms, it is necessary to return to the group of forms in the binder and resume the page-by-page approach described above. Similarly, if a new form is added to the group of forms, in order to compare the new form to the existing forms, it is also necessary to return to the page-by-page approach. Thus, the conventional method does not provide an easily updatable catalog of form information.
It is often preferable to prepare a standardized document management system data sheet for each form within the group of forms stored in the binder. The information on standardized data sheet is utilized to create new forms using a computerized document management system. According to the conventional method of evaluation, these data sheets must be prepared independent of the preparation of the evaluation notes. Further, if any portion of information present on one of the forms changes, a new standardized document management system data sheet must be manually prepared. Thus, according to the conventional evaluation method, even where a computerized document management system is used to produce new forms, a substantial investment of time is required to prepare the standardized data sheets.
Accordingly, there is a need for a comprehensive document audit system and a process for generating a document field report which provide for convenient examination and review of form information, eliminate the need for manual page-by-page form analysis, have the capacity to efficiently handle a large number of forms, provide an easily updatable catalog of form information, and can quickly and easily generate standardized document management system data sheets.